Lessons from Great Minds of Value Investing.

One of the benefits of reading and learning about investing and investors is that you can learn a lot about life. You get more life wisdom rather than investment wisdom, I would even go as far to say that the latter is a bonus. Most of the great investors have tasted great success, experienced great failure, resisted temptations, handled bare borne emotions like greed and fear, shown exemplary courage and exemplary humility, separated what is important from what is urgent and unimportant and finally, helped a large number of people to become successful and lead their life with calm and peace. 

For his book 'Great minds of investing', William Green and team interviewed 22 of the greatest minds of investing

The Tao Way to handle negative habits and emotions....

Each one of us has some habits that we want to get rid of. We struggle with it through our lives and stress out ourselves trying desperately to remove it.

That may not be the right approach. The right approach may be to use the negative habits and emotions to our advantage, as this gem of a story from the book 'Tao of Pooh', beautifully demonstrates.

Sooner or later, we are bound to discover some things about ourselves that we don't like. But once we see they're there, we can decide what we want to do with them. Do we want to get rid of them completely, change them into other things, or use them in beneficial ways? The last two approaches are often especially Useful, since they avoid head on conflict, and therefore minimize struggle. Also, they allow those transformed characteristics to be added to the list of things we have that help us out In a similar manner, instead of struggling to erase what are referred to as negative emotions, we can learn to use them in positive ways. We could describe the principle like this: while pounding on the piano keys may produce noise, removing them doesn't exactly further the creation of music. The principles of Music and Living aren't all that different, we think.

So rather than work against ourselves, all we need to do in many cases is to point our weaknesses or pleasant tendencies in a different direction than we have been.

The following incident recorded by the Taoist Liu An can serve to illustrate:

In the state of Ch'u, a housebreaker became a soldier under the General Tzu-fa, a man known for utilizing the abilities of others to a remarkable degree. 

A short while later, Ch'u was attacked by the army of the state of Ch'i. Tzu-fa's men went out to counter the attack, but were driven back three times. The Ch'u strategists exhausted their minds while the enemy forces grew stronger.

At that point, the housebreaker stepped forward and asked for a chance to work for the defence of Ch'u. The General granted his request. 

That night, the housebreaker sneaked into the Ch'i camp, entered the general's tent, and removed the curtains from the bed. Tzu-fa sent these back the next morning by special envoy, with a note which explained that they had been found by some men who were out gathering firewood.

The following evening, the housebreaker removed the Ch'i general's pillow. The next morning, it was returned with a message like the first. 

On the third night, the housebreaker removed the general's jade hairpin. It was returned the next morning.

That day, the Ch'i general called his officers together.

"One more night," he warned them, "and it will be my head!" The troops were ordered to break camp 

and return home.

So there is no such thing as an ability that is too useless, too crooked, or too small. It only depends on what you do with it. As Lao-tse pointed out, the bad can be raw material for the good.

So quite often, the easiest way to get rid of a Minus is to change it into a Plus. Sometimes you will find that characteristics you try hard to eliminate eventually come back, anyway. But if you do the right things, they will come back in the right ways. And sometimes those very tendencies that you dislike the most can show up in the right way at the right time to save your life, somehow. If that's ever happened to you, you'll think twice before setting out to completely Unbounce yourself.

Life Lessons from a Train Journey....

Gupta was my colleague when I was working in the Steel Plant. One day over a cup of coffee, he told me about this incident.

One night, he was travelling from his home town of Dharbanga in Bihar to Durgapur. At night when he woke up, he found that the train had had a breakdown and had stopped in a no man’s land. It was about midnight and was not clear when the breakdown had happened and when it will be attended to. There was no way of knowing where they were and how far they were from Durgapur. Gupta was supposed to attend duty the next day.

Since he was light on luggage and since it was unclear when they will attend to the breakdown, while other passengers decided to wait for the crew  to arrive, Gupta decided to walk along the railway track in the direction of Durgapur.

“I was not sure where I was and how far I was from Durgapur. I did not know how much time it will take for me to reach my destination”, Gupta told me while taking a sip.

“I was looking at lot of uncertainties. But I couldn’t sit idle. So I just started walking and continued walking. I took it step by step, walked one step at a time but continued walking”, Gupta continued his story.

“Eventually at around 2.00 AM I came across a railway station that was familiar. I knew that from there if I walked at a decent pace, I could reach Durgapur by early morning in time for the duty. So I walked for another 5 hours and reached Durgapur at about 6.30 AM and reached home by 7.30. I was able to reach office, albeit a bit late, at about 9.00 AM. All is well that ends well”, said Gupta

I was fascinated with this story. “What did you make out of that experience?”, I asked.

“My walk of over 7 hours can be divided into two phases. In phase one, the first three hours or so, I walked in the general direction of Durgapur, hardly knowing how far I will have walk and unsure if I will be able to attend duty the next day. In this phase, I had to cope with the  uncertainty and a lack of clarity in mind. Motivating myself to keep walking was tough in this phase. But I willed myself to take it one step at a time.”,  Gupta paused for a sip of Java brew.

“Phase two started when I knew where I was in relation to my destination. I knew the effort required and had clarity about when I will reach my destination. That was one load off my mind. But still I had to walk for about five hours, one step after another, without succumbing to tiredness or falling to the temptation to give up and wait for the morning for a bus to take me to Durgapur”

Gupta finished his story. You could say that he was proud of himself.

This happens many a time in life. Lots of times we are having to work, move forward in face of significant uncertainties. For a student in Class X in India, it could be the preparation for the exams falling two years later and the associated uncertainties regarding her future. For a project manager it could be a project that is embroiled in so many issues (believe me, they do exist) with end nowhere in sight. Or it could be that one is stuck in a lousy job from which there seems to be no escape.

For 10 years of my life, I worked in a steel plant, staying away from home, working in a job that was not aligned with my interest or my potential or to my goals and aspirations, but not having courage to quit...

If you can imagine that, you know what I am talking about.

It is at times like these that Gupta’s advice becomes relevant. It is important that we keep that fire burning, that hunger unsated and those steps uninterrupted.

Whatever happens, one should move forward. Yesterday is history, our life is going to be made over a series of tomorrows.

So look forward and keep up those steps one at a time....

Life Lessons from X....

I am going to talk about a person I know. Let us call him X.

This story is not about X. X is just a referral in this story.

He was in a senior role in his company that he joined early in his career. Having graduated from a prestigious institute and done the post graduation in Management from one of the top 5 management institutes in the country, as far as his career was concerned, let us say that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

He was definitely looking at occupying a very senior role in the company, probably even the CEO in the next 10 years.

Then something happened. He left the company. I don't know why. Then I lost touch.

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about this gentleman. I asked him what happened to X.

"After he left the company", my friend said, "X co-founded a company. Soon he left that also. For a few years after that he took the role of 'Corporate Trainer'. Recently I heard that he has left that and taken up some other work"

This news got me thinking.

How is it possible that a highly qualified person, one of the elites in the country, lose his way like this? How does this happen? What are the lessons that we can learn from this?

First lesson is that it is very easy to lose control on your life. All it takes is one or two bad decisions, decisions taken mostly in isolation and probably in an emotionally charged state to derail the direction of our life. I remember taking multiple decisions in emotional state, decisions that I regretted in retrospect. It is very important that our decisions are taken in the right context of our overall life objective.

Second lesson is that in our life, it is important that we have a guiding beacon, a sort of light house as it were. It helps us stay rooted and helps us take correct decisions in case of any course corrections that will invariably happen, mostly around the middle age.

The beacon can be our goals or our values. For my dad, the life beacon was his strong set of values which guided every decision that he took. For many of us, the beacon could be our goals.

Goals can be of three types. If you are very fortunate, you could identify a single long-term goal at a relatively young age that can guides and shapes your entire life. It is like a fully constructed house and all the aspects of your life are well integrated throughout your life time.

Some of us do not have long-term goals. We have a set of medium term goals and we move from one medium term goal to another. In this case it is important that the medium term goals are consistent and move you forward and helps you tell a neat story.

In this case you are building your house of life as you go along.

Medium term goals are like Prefab structures that you assemble together to build a house. An inconsistent set of medium term goals will lead you to building a disjointed house with rooms here and there without them being inter-connected.

Mind you, each room may be beautiful and complete by themselves, but are not integrated to become a beautiful house. The life will be like a set of discrete events rather than a beautiful story.

Most of us have only short term goals. We move from one short term goal to another without them being consistent with each other and with the overall perspective to life. Inconsistent short-term goals are like bricks haphazardly lying all over the place. We invest a lot of our life effort in meeting these goals, but they were not guided by an overarching set of goals or values or objectives.

There is no house, there is only an ‘intent’ to build one.

But spare a thought for those who do not have any goals at all. They are potential beggars in the journey of life.